Subeta was created in 2004 by teenager Keith Kurson (he was 14 at the time) as a retaliation against the strict rules Viacom was imposing on Neopets and because he failed in finding a better pet site. Like Neopets, people can play games and quests, buy and sell items, and adopt pets. But unlike Neopets, which is aimed at a wider audience, Subeta strives for an older, more niche audience and focuses more on customizing your human avatar than on customizing the pets themselves.

To this day, the site has over 100,000 members, with an average of 900 online at the same time, with peaks at 2,000.

This website provides examples of:

Allegedly Free Game: Like most pet sites, Subeta has a Cash Shop, where you can buy account upgrades and special items with real money. However, the regular currency is easy to make, and you can use that to buy 'cash shop credits' from user shops.

The Artifact: There are many items which seem to be nonsensical, even by Subeta standards- i.e, the Bomb-Disguised Surfboard. These were actually 'custom items' thought up by and named after popular Subeta users in '04/'05, which had to be quickly renamed when the user left. Some of these artifact custom items are still floating around with their original names intact, although they're hard to find.

Author Avatar: Besides King Keith (that was the King of Subeta in the beginning), Sebastian Phoenix and Calvin Blackmoon (the Chancellor of Subeta and the Governor of Atebus respectively), were based (at least partially) on Keith.

Awesome, but Impractical: So many items that can't even be counted. But then, they are going to avert this in the future with the items that already didn't escape from this trope.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: Elwood isn't having any of this "fourth wall" nonsense. Played for Laughs in the 2016 Omen Island plot, where he makes continuous references to things such as Plot Armor and which characters have had art revamps, only for the other NPCs to tell him to stop talking like that because nobody knows what he's talking about.

Cosmetic Award: The Avatars, then, the Achievements, and then, the new Achievements, that subvert this by giving prizes when people reach a certain difficulty (which is, generally, really... Difficult).

Cosplay: Often done with the Human Avatars in the forums, for contests or just for fun. EPICon, an event that took place in August 2010 had a full out public contest to go with the other activities and Fan Convention-like like feel.

Dark Is Not Evil: Despite the white and black magic practitioners being mostly aligned where they would supposed to, the Element Mage doesn't care about studying Darkness magic, despite being an awfully kind Chai.

You can give your pet "dark colours" like Nightmare and its morality isn't ostensibly modified. Same with dark powers. Granted, most dark attacks sound nasty, but then again, same for light ones.

Dirty Old Man: The Wizard. He even has a book called "The Joys of Bra Collecting"!

Elaborate Equals Effective: As is the case with some higher-tier weapons. However, it is played straight with the legendary weapons which are the some of the strongest weapons on the site and are also some of the most beautiful.

Fantastic Racism: The Living and the Unliving minority do not get on. This is what prompted the Feb '10 plot: when the Living started putting on crude Unliving masks in an attempt to celebrate the anniversary of the Great Epidemic, the Unliving thought they were being racist and attacked anyone who came to Shadowglen Graveyard wearing a mask.

Fair-Play Whodunnit: March 2010's plot (the murder of Vernon Yun) was designed as a classic whodunnit for the userbase to solve.

Gag Boobs: Poor Titania. All she wants is to be taken seriously as the best source for Subetan news, but her... unfortunate name has lead to plenty of teasing from the user base. Mature? No. Hilarious? Of course.

Nerds Are Sexy: Played straight with Nico◊ and the two aforementioned scientists, but averted with the Computer Quests NPC. Ornot.

Nitro Boost: During Masquerade events, there is a chance, when dancing with other users, that you can get effected with the "Quick Feet" buff, which reduces the wait time between dances from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.

Our Zombies Are Different: Subetan zombies are Type P, but they're all sentient (albeit not too eloquent) and call themselves the Unliving. They live in the Shadowglen Graveyard and resent the Living. In addition, they vary "wildly" in appearance, from traditional rotting-flesh zombies to Plant People to bioluminescent slug people to creatures that more closely resemble stone statues than traditional zombies.

We Help the Helpless: Sarah and her Newbie Quests. Although sometimes, it is more of a nuisance than a help.

Yaoi Fangirl: Plenty. It became a Halloween tradition to fawn over Jaxon and see which other NPC he would bang, to the staff's despair.

Zombie Apocalypse: The plot of Feb '09 involved people's avatars randomly catching viral strains and turning into horrific zombies. There was no way to reverse the change- the news played it up as a full on disaster, complete with increasingly crazed posts from Titania. A cure was released on Valentine's Day, much to the relief of dedicated avatar fashionistas, but many users chose to keep their zombie skins. This outbreak has become an annual tradition, with new zombie strains breaking out every February. As of 2015, any zombie skin a user acquires is saved in their wardrobe and can be re-equipped at any time, allowing for users to create their own Zombie Apocalypse avatar whenever they like.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy